Parasite Movie (2019) Interesting Facts, Mistakes

Parasite Movie Story Summary

Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.

Parasite Movie Stars

Song Kang-Ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong

Parasite Movie Storyline

The Kims - mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung - are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required. Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university. The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs. Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks' adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend "Jessica", really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks' employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired. The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks' housekeeper who literally came with the house - she Namgoong's housekeeper when he lived there - and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.

Parasite Movie Interesting Facts

• The Parks' house, said in the film to be designed by a fictional architect named Namgoong Hyeonja, was a set completely built from scratch.
• Ki-woo's job, at-home tutor, was chosen because director Bong Joon Ho realized that sadly the job is the only way that families from two extreme ends of the class spectrum in modern-day South Korea can cross their paths convincingly in the story arc.
• Bong Joon Ho did a lot of sketches of the basic structures for the rich house. He further revealed that when the production designer consulted an actual architect to design this house, the architect saw the sketches and said "no idiot would build houses this way. This is ridiculous."
• Won the Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the first Korean film to ever do so.
• In an interview with Korean magazine Cine21, Director Bong Joon Ho spoke of his experience in filming in a hyper-rich Korean home. He said his hand literally shook from anxiety when he was returning a trash can that was used as a prop: the trash can was of high-tech variety that stayed silent even when the lid was being closed and cost as much as US $2,500.
• Bong Joon Ho was particularly happy with the Best Editing and Best Production Design Oscar nominations for the film as he felt the great technicians and masters working in the Korean film industry were getting recognized for the first time. However, these were the only Oscar categories that the film was nominated for but didn't win.
• Scholar's stones or landscape rocks are known as "suseok" in Korean, have a deep history in East Asia. The director's father collected them when he was younger. The practice of collecting these attractively shaped stones dates back thousands of years, but they became a fixture of Korean society during the Joseun dynasty (1392-1897), when they were commonly displayed on the writing tables of Confucian scholars -- hence their English name: "scholars rocks."
• The film makes several nods to Alfred Hitchcock throughout. Stairs are used as a motif, voyeurism is used as characters watch scenes through windows 14 times, and (most obviously) there is a brief glimpse of an out of place Alfred Hitchcock collection in the Parks' home.
• At the Munich Film Festival, Bong Joon Ho said that he does not like screenwriting, and that it makes him nervous and insufferable to his family. The idea for Parasite has existed since 2015, and the final script was written in three and a half months.
• Wide aspect ratio of 2.35 was chosen to accommodate the capture of large family group in a single frame, says director Bong Joon Ho.
• When questioned about the significance of the stone his character possesses in the film, Choi Woo-sik replied that Bong Joon Ho didn't tell it meant something, and just told him to take care of it.
• Shot in 77 days.
• The house was designed to feature lines that clearly divide the Parks and Kims.
• On almost all of his films, Bong Joon Ho has worked closely with American translator Darcy Paquet, a Korean resident and "cinephile" blogger of Korean movies, and gives him tremendous credit for their collaboration, especially for the astute way he enhances the American English quality of script and subtitles.
• Bong Joon Ho first conceived of the film as a play, but the first line itself got him thinking about the camera positions. He just realized that he had to do this as a film, as always.
• The third film to win both the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Picture, after The Lost Weekend (1945) and Marty (1955). Of the three films, only this and the latter won unanimously at Cannes.
• According to editor Jinmo Yang, he edited the film in Final Cut Pro 7 - an editing program that Apple stopped supporting in 2011, on a computer that hasn't had a software update since 2014. He received an Oscar nomination for his work.
• Asking them to refrain from spoilers, Bong Joon Ho released "A word of pleading" for international press before the Cannes premiere of the film.
• Speaking about the black-and-white release of the film, Bong Joon Ho hoped that with the colors gone, viewers could see more clearly the contrast in living conditions between the rich and poor families.
• Director Bong Joon Ho chose his long time collaborator Song Kang-Ho and Choi Woo-sik, who was in Bong's last film Okja (2017), before picking any other actors of the movie while writing the script. Bong also said that if Song had declined, he wouldn't have made the movie, as he couldn't think of another actor playing the part.
• Because of his respect and fascination with black & white cinematography, director/writer Bong Joon Ho announced that he would re-release his acclaimed film in just such a B&W version in January 2020. This special presentation of "Parasite" was planned to debut in the Rotterdam Film Festival, with US screenings to follow in NYC and Los Angeles as well as small art house theaters in other cities like the Granbury in Ft. Worth Texas.
• Bong Joon Ho's first all-Korean production since Mother (2009).
• When asked if he thought this was his best film, Bong Joon Ho shrugged, saying his next one is the best, and then paused to say he hopes so.
• Director Bong Joon Ho said that for a scene that featured the mother and daughter, the mother's best performance was the third take and the daughter's the fifth, so editor Jinmo Yang split the shot in half to stitch together the best performance for each actor.
• Official submission of South Korea for the 'Best International Feature Film' category of the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020.
• At the Critics' Choice Awards, Bong Joon Ho felt his face flush and turn red when Todd Phillips came over and said he saw the film three times and felt many things watching it.
• The architect of the Park mansion shares the same family name with Song Kang-Ho's character in Snowpiercer (2013), i.e. Namgoong. Song is a regular cast member of Bong Joon Ho's films.
• Two major New York Times film critics were so profoundly impressed with the actresses' performances in this film that in their December 2019 article asserting who the 2020 Oscar nominees "Should Be," one of them, Manohla Dargis opined for "Best Supporting Actress," 4 of the 5 nominees should be ALL four female performers from "Parasite." The other critic, A.O. Scott thought 3 of the "Parasite" actresses should be so nominated (excluding Jang Hye-Jin).
• (at around 10 mins) When Ki-Woo asks about the tutoring job near the beginning of the film, a bus passes behind him. This bus was timed by the director to pass as he asks the question.
• Bong Joon Ho felt the film did well because it appealed in a very cinematic way, as a film in itself. He really wanted to take time to look back at what that cinematic appeal was.
• Nominated for six Academy Awards (2020). It won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best international Feature. It was also nominated for Best Film Editing and Best Production Design, but did not win in those categories.
• The Parks are in their own way parasites: each member of the family is in sore need of a companion, as they can't rely on each other properly.
• The third collaboration of director Bong Joon Ho and cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo. Hong was also the cinematographer of the last year's Korean cinema at Cannes, Burning (2018).
• Total number of principal photography sessions: 77. Reported production budget: KRW 13-15 billion (US $11-13 million as of May 2019).
• (at around 19 mins) The peculiar self-portrait, made by her young son, that Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong) proudly shows off to Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-sik) on his first visit to the Parks, bears a very strong resemblance (altered, of course, to resemble a child's work) to the wild-eyed painting by the eccentric Mrs. Antony (Marion Lorne) of St. Francis, which her mad son Bruno (Robert Walker) finds amusing, in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, Strangers on a Train (1951). (A clip from the Hitchcock scene is viewable on YouTube.) That this resemblance is probably not coincidental is attested to by the numerous Hitchcockian themes and tropes scattered throughout this film, as well as the very prominent placement of a Hitchcock video in one shot.
• Winner of 2019 Official Competition Prize at Sydney Film Festival.
• Stairs and vertical structures are a motif that runs through the entire film, which highlights the social divide between Parks and Kims. In fact, the director Bong Joon-ho called the project a "staircase movie" while filming it
• This is the fourth film on which director Bong Joon Ho and actor Song Kang-Ho collaborated.
• Lee Jeong-eun, who plays the housekeeper, had collaborated twice with Bong Joon Ho before this film. She played a supporting role in Mother (2009) and also voiced the titular pig in Okja (2017).
• The trash can in the Parks' house costs $2,300 in real life. Bong Joon Ho chose it because it doesn't make any noise and opens very smoothly. Still, he was baffled by the cost, saying: "What the fuck? What kind of idiot would buy a trash can that's going to smell anyway?"
• First film in a foreign language to win the Academy Award for "Best Picture", and also the first movie to win the awards for both "Best Picture" and "Best International Film" (formerly Best Foreign Language Film).
• Italian actor/singer Gianni Morandi commented in an interview that he was overjoyed that the movie featuring his performance of the song "In Ginocchio Da Te" ("On My Knees Before You") won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Morandi called the film "exceptional" and director Bong Joon Ho "a genius". He also praised legendary Ennio Morricone, who did not compose the piece (its authors were Migliacci and Zambrini) but was responsible for its musical arrangement.
• The second wholly non-American and non-British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, after France's The Artist (2011).
• First film since The Departed (2006) to win the Academy Award for Best Director without being nominated for Best Cinematography.
• The most successful South Korean feature of all time in Indonesia, with approx. 500,000 tickets sold (as of July 28, 2019).
• Although a big commercial success, the film came under controversy for the 15+ age rating it received from the censors despite a dry sex scene that viewers considered inappropriate for children to see.
• The white & red face painting by the boy resembles the man in the basement and the movie's final scene.
• The highest rated narrative film on Letterboxd.
• This film is to be included in the Criterion Collection.
• First South Korean film to be nominated and to win the Oscar for "Best International Film" (2020) which was also the first year the category was renamed from "Best Foreign Film".
• In the South Korean version, Ki-jung makes Ki-woo a fake diploma for Yonsei University, while in international versions, the fake diploma is for Oxford university. Bong Joon Ho felt that international audiences needed to understand the immaculate pedigree the fake resumé promised.
• The song over the end credits is called "A Glass of Soju" and features lyrics written by Bong Joon-ho. "Please try this song in karaoke, so I can earn some money from it." he stated.
• When the Parks leave on vacation and the Kims take over the house, the poorer family celebrates with food and drink. The alcohol opens the door to some ambiguity, though, regarding the Kim family's tight relationship as friction grows between them. "Ambiguity makes audiences very nervous, and there is some tension," says Bong Joon-ho.
• Both families' homes were built from scratch as Bong Joon-ho wanted "full control" of their living spaces. The street outside the opening window is all a facade constructed inside a large water tank.
• Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) is one of Bong Joon-ho's favorite films, and elements of it inspired this movie.
• Real trees are expensive, so half of the ones seen encircling the Parks' back yard are created via CG composites.
• Bong Joon-ho not sure why he named the rich father's company Another Brick, but he thinks it might have been because he was a huge fan of Pink Floyd when he was in high school.
• "As a screenwriter," says Bong Joon-ho, he really hates elements like CCTV recordings, mobile phones, and other technological advancements that get in the way of story.
• The family that Song Kang-Ho's character, Ki Taek, works for in the film shares the same family name as his character in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). His character in that film is called Park Dong-jin and is a rich businessman similar to Park Dong-ik from this film.
• The wealthy family's home was built for the film, but only the first floor is real as the second floor of the exterior is CG. The interior of the second story, along with the basement, is a soundstage.
• The gym in the film is the same place where Bong Joon-ho filmed the quarantine sequence in The Host (2006). He didn't realize it and was reminded by a member of the crew. "Oh fuck!" was his reply.
• Asked if there's greater meaning to the Park family's appreciation of Native American paraphernalia, Bong Joon-ho suggests that it's no deeper than someone deciding to wear a Che Guevara tee-shirt.
• Tony Rayns points out how Bong Joon-ho films, Parasite in particular, never stops to deliver exposition and instead builds its story on the move. "I was very inspired by George Miller's Mad Max Fury Road. That movie never stops, all physical action and movement, it just keeps going going going, but all the background information and story occurs quite naturally."
• There's a couple scenes where there are 10 chairs at the dinner table. Not only does it make a statement about the rich having more than plenty to go around. But this foreshadows that the Parks had enough to share between themselves, the Kim family, and the maid and her husband.
• Bong Joon-ho has shown black & white versions of Parasite and Mother (2009), and Tony Rayns asks him why. "I can not suppress my desire to have my own black & white movie." Bong revealed. Criterion's new Blu-ray of Parasite features the b&w version as an extra feature.
• Bong Joon-ho storyboards everything, and that means he never has to shoot coverage shots as everything is planned out precisely.
• When it comes to scenes featuring long conversations between characters, Bong Joon-ho is inspired by the works of Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers who he views as masters of such things.
• Bong Joon-ho was never given an Americanized name like some of his fellow Koreans and like Mr. Park in the film who goes by Nathan but he mentions that he learned his surname, Bong, has a meaning in the US. His first distributor in the US actually sat him down and explained what a bong is "and they actually gave me a real bong as a gift after the promotion of The Host." He adds that it caused him some trouble at the airport.
• The ram-don dish is popular in South Korea, but Bong Joon-ho added the sirloin into it for the film's wealthy characters. "I never tried it."
• The Park couple engage in some heavy petting and fully-clothed handy-work while on the couch, and Tony Rayns mentions it's as explicit of a sex scene as Bong Joon-ho has ever filmed. "I'm not that perverted guy," says Bong. "I'm a very light and pleasant man."
• Tony Rayns asks about the arrow sticking out of the little boy's behind, and Bong Joon-ho laughs. "Please don't misunderstand, not every Korean nine-year-old boy has something on the butt." It was a detail he just added to his storyboard of the scene even though it isn't in the script.
• The film brought Bong Joon-ho a level of exposure and success that he hasn't known before, but he doesn't think it's affected him. "Still I don't know what happened, it's quite strange." He's writing the script for his next film and says it all feels the same as far as the process goes. He did send one of his Oscars to his mom's house, though.
• There are two Indian headdresses in Da-Song's room. This is what Ki-teak and Mr Park wear at the birthday party at the end of the movie.
• Voted movie of the year by Empire magazine in 2020. The last time a non-English language film topped their list was Let the Right One In (2008) back in 2009.
• This is the 12th film to win the Best Picture Oscar without being nominated for any acting awards, after Wings (1927), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Grand Hotel (1932), An American in Paris (1951), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Gigi (1958), The Last Emperor (1987), Braveheart (1995), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), and Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
• The onscreen title uses spirals in its script where normally there would be circles, and Bong Joon-ho says it originated with the original poster design. The artist did it there, and the filmmaker loved it "because a spiral feels like a parasite in our body."
• Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
• Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-sik, and Lee Jeong-eun were already in Bong Joon-ho's mind when writing the script as he had worked with them all previously and knew they'd be perfect fits here.
• Film critic and commentator Tony Rayns points out some similarities in scenes between this film and Bong Joon-ho earlier work the fumigation in Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), the shaking pizza boxes in Tokyo! (2008) and Bong replies "Tony, you are the man who knew too much. I am very uncomfortable with it."
• Asked if he himself has a scholar's stone (as seen in the film), Bong Joon-ho replies that he's no fan of the real ones. "I hate something heavy." His father collected them, though.

Parasite Movie Mistakes

• (at around 1h 30 mins) When the Kims are sneaking out of the house while the Parks are sleeping on the couch, the Kim's are barefoot. When seen running home they somehow now have their shoes. If they had left their shoes at the entrance the Parks would likely have noticed them. It would be more likely they would have left them in the garage.
• (at around 1h 23 mins) The maid's mouth is shown to be bound with a cloth to prevent her from yelling, but when it cuts back, the cloth has vanished. There would be no way she could have taken it off since her hands were also bound.
• The "servant family" gets out with their phones in their pocket and go to their home completely drenched in rain, then into almost neck-deep water. Yet, despite this, the next morning their phones keep working just fine as they all receive calls from the rich family. on those phones.
• While it may not seem to make sense for a famed architect to design hallway lights that rely on someone in the basement to operate, these lights are shown being turned on and off from upstairs in the main house. Secondary access from a secure area, or panic room, makes perfect sense during an emergency.
• (at around 1h 9 mins) According to the movie, the previous owner didn't tell the Parks about the bunker because he was embarrassed. But bunkers are common in South Korea, and this would be a selling point. In any case, the real estate agent could tell the Parks. The housekeeper also knows about it, even before her husband is hiding there, but she never tells the Parks. There is really no good reason they don't know about it.

FAQ on Parasite Movie

Why weren't there any cameras inside Mr. Park's house?

Moon-gwang cut the cables to every camera in the house before arriving at the house, so that Mrs. Kim could say she "never arrived".

Why did the Kim family use English names for themselves when working for the Parks?

It is very common to assume a common name in the language / region you are learning. For example, when I learned German I picked the name Hans.
It also makes the Kims seem more sophisticated to the Parks, who value Western/international tutors.

How is Parasite a comedy? Apart from a couple of lines by the Mrs. Kim, I didn't find anything comedic.

The first half of the movie when the family members were scheming to get each other hired was comical. There is a mischievous humor to it.

What's the meaning of the first and last shot being the same?

Director Bong Joon Ho said "Parasite" begins with a scene in which the sun lights up Ki-taek's filthy semi-basement home as if his family are not yet living below-the-surface lives. "But at the same time, they are afraid of falling into a complete underground situation if they get worse," he said. "This is the ingenious point my movie has" , Nearly 90 percent of the story takes place in a big house, the home of the rich family. It has a vertical structure -- second floor, first floor and basement " . Vertical structures typically symbolize social hierarchy in cinema, but Bong said the structures in "Parasite" are even more special because of indigenous subterranean residential spaces called "semi-basements. "In South Korea, the semi-basement has subtle nuances," he said. "(People) live underground, but want to believe that they are above the ground because they have a moment when sunlight comes into their room." The ending is narrated from Ki-woo's perspective. Ki-woo promises that one day, he will earn enough money and buy the house so that his father can be free. The movie ends with Ki-woo waking up from a dream in which he purchases the house and the three remaining family members reunite. but the last shot which is same as the first shot indicate it's very unlikely that their condition will ever improve, indicating socio-economic barrier between classes may not change.

How was Ki-Woo going to send his letter to his father, if he was underground and had no visibility into the outside world?

The ending of the movie created the impression that Ki-Woo was more or less writing that letter (with its promise to buy the house) to himself, as there really was no way he could ever deliver it to his father.

What is the meaning of that rock?

That rock has multiple meanings throughout this movie. At the beginning of the movie, the rock means luck and hope to Kim Ki-woo. It represented his need to climb up the mountain to become rich, famous and successful. Towards the end of the movie, as the family loses control and situation gets worse, his dreams all crash. He was devastated and realized the rock is just a normal rock; nothing special about it. The meaning of the rock became greed, hatred, lies, impurity and poverty. The rock had turned into murder weapon. The rock eventually is returned to the river where it sits beautifully with other similar rocks, this could represent a returning to a more natural place which contrasts with the 'insanity' of the societal structures explored within the movie. Rocks also symbolize stability.

Wouldn't Chung-sook and Ki-woo go to jail at the end? Why are they on probation?

The hidden bunker and Moon-gwang's corpse were not discovered; if the whole story had emerged Chung-sook would definitely have been charged with murder and her son would have been accessory to the crime.
Without the whole story involving Moon-gwang and Geun-se (believed to be a crazy homeless man who mysteriously broke into the Parks' house), and with the murder of Dong-Ik Park committed by Ki-taek alone, Chung-sook and Ki-woo only appeared guilty of the relatively minor crime of deceiving their employers with fake identities and credentials, with all their worse deeds ignored by the law.

Why did the father of the family kill Mr Park ?

Because at first he saw the family as nice people (but stupid), it eventually turned around and he started to see a condescending, snobby side to the family. When his daughter and wife were stabbed, he saw the Park family run away not even trying to help. The Park father then asked for the carkeys so they could get away instead of helping. So, Kim witnessed his daughter and wife get stabbed and saw his son being carried away with a bloodied head, that and Park family having no concern for this just took Kim to breaking point and made him do what he did.
Another point is that Mr. Park references the damp/moldy smell of Mr. Kim as if he were just some subterranean animal but not a human. If you see it metaphorically, you can imagine this a commentary on society's prejudice towards lower classes, or the "smell of the lower class". In this final scene he was again holding his nose, and this was one more reason for Mr. Kim to stab him.

Useful External Links

Parasite Movie on Wikipedia 

Parasite Movie on IMDB